The false premise of the Iraq Study Group Report

This is another shortened version of a new Slate article. At the beginning of the week I wrote there about Lebanon, today it was the Baker-Hamilton Committee. Read it in full here, or just these couple of paragraphs:

Here's a question that the Baker-Hamilton committee report didn't completely address: What happens if its new approach doesn't work?

The recommendations regarding Syria, to give one example, are astonishing. The United States and Israel have refused to engage Syria in peace talks - and it seems as if the committee is ready to recommend a new approach of re-engagement. Or at least this is how the need-to-make-a-headline-out-of-it media have interpreted the report.

But what barriers does the committee set for the Syrians? "Some elements of that negotiated peace should be: Syria's full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon... A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah... Syria's use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers... A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon."

Amazingly enough, this is as similar as one can get to the stated goals of the Bush administration. The one difference between the committee's proposals and the current administration policy is this: You refuse to engage Syria until it agrees to these reasonable demands - or you engage Syria first and then insist that it accepts these demands. Which brings me back to the question that opened this article: What do you do if the Syrians refuse to show positive signs of cooperation? Do you keep talking? Do you give up on your demands? Do you withdraw your negotiating team - waiting for the next committee to recommend yet another trial?

A U.S. administration official I spoke to a couple of days ago expressed anxiety that the report might create what he called a "false debate." He was proved right. The debate is indeed false, since it doesn't address the most probable outcome of the committee's recommendations: The Syrians will not cooperate, the UN Security Council will not convince the Iranians to give up on their nuclear program, and the Iraqi military will not be ready to assume power in the country. And then what?